The position of a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, tablet computer, personal media player, or other wireless electronic device can be estimated based on wireless signals transmitted by wireless access points (APs) and received by the mobile device. If the mobile device knows the locations of the APs, the mobile device can estimate the position by using measurements of the wireless signals to calculate the distance or range between the mobile device and each AP. If the mobile device does not have the locations of the APs stored locally, the data can be requested from a server and downloaded.
For organizational purposes, APs are typically grouped into “tiles” representing geographical regions, often arranged in a predetermined grid without consideration of what venues these tiles may cover. Thus, in response to a request for the locations of the APs, a server may provide an entire tile, which may include the information of many APs that are not within a venue at which the mobile device is located. Because mobile devices often have limited memory allocated to AP location data storage, it can be a drain on power consumption for the mobile device at a venue that may overlap a plurality of tiles, because it may need to frequently download and re-download tile information as the mobile device moves between tiles, much of which is inapplicable to the venue.